One of the perks of working with a huge company is that there is no shortage of analyst reports and presentations you can peruse. I was going through a whole bunch of reports today and read closely two of them.
One was a presentation that was typical of analysts – fancy forecasts in a market segment we already know a lot about and nothing new was revealed (and for sure the numbers, winners, and forecasts changed quarterly). This was basic research, interviewing users and estimating trends. Yes, analysts are good at this, but you can forget about ever becoming smarter as a result of reading such reports. I ended up calling it ’20/20 hindsight into the future’.
The second report was a similar data analysis type of report, but the questions they were asking were much more clever. Therefore, the value of the trends were much greater, since it pointed out things in ways we normally don’t think of. Nonetheless, it was a trend report, a report on existing trends. More 20/20 hindsight, only with better guidance.
The second report was from: M:Metrics. I link to them here, since I poked around their website and was intrigued (they were new to me).
But, here’s my thought for the day. What if analysts backed away from the research a bit and used their big brains to guide innovation? What if they could figure out what could not be asked, what could not be measured, but what could use a bit of attention.
Isn’t that the best use of data? I have done this my whole career (I should say, my three careers) – measure and observe and analyze, and then kick butt with insights and innovations the data missed or suggested somehow. Data analysis is about now with a future predicated on now. Innovation is about tomorrow and a future predicated on tomorrow. You need to be able to go beyond the data of now to innovate in the future. I have never found analysts, with all their clever reports or presentations, to help me there.
